S. Janaki, the ‘Nightingale of South’, celebrated her 75th birthday

Born at Pallapatla in Repalle Village in Guntur District of Andhra Pradesh in 1938, Janaki won an all-India singing competition in 1956 when she was just 18 years of age and received the prize from the then President Dr. Rajendra Prasad. She debuted as a playback singer in Tamil with Vidhiyin Vilaiyattu and sung as many as 100 songs in her first year in her professional career.

Known as a versatile singer, Janaki has sung in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi, Sinhalese, Bengali, Sanskrit, Oriya, Gujarati, English, Konkani, Tulu, German, Saurashtra, Paduga and Punjabi languages. She also has the amazing skill of singing in a 5-year old child’s voice as in a 60-year old’s voice with equal ease. Winner of the national award for ‘best playback singer’ four times, Janaki’s rise to the top is mostly through Maestro Ilaiyaraaja’s mesmerizing songs in countless number of films.